this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2026
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A recent study published in Scientific Reports suggests that political beliefs are increasingly linked to the number of children Americans choose to have. The findings indicate that while conservative individuals tend to maintain birth rates near historical averages, left-leaning individuals are having significantly fewer children. This demographic trend provides evidence that differing birth rates are a main driver of recent fertility declines in the United States.

The data revealed a pronounced change in how political beliefs relate to family size. For individuals born in the early 1900s, political orientation had almost no association with the number of children they had. However, beginning with the cohort born between 1943 and 1947, a massive divergence emerged.

“We expected these results, but not to such a dramatic extent,” Fieder told PsyPost. From the mid-century cohorts onward, individuals with right-wing political views maintained birth rates at or slightly above the replacement level. The replacement level, typically considered to be 2.1 children per woman, is the rate needed for a population to replace itself from one generation to the next without immigration.

In contrast, the birth rates of left-wing individuals dropped sharply, falling well below the replacement level in the more recent cohorts. The authors noticed this drop aligns with historical changes in family planning. “We found that the gap began with the introduction of modern contraception,” Fieder said.

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[–] osanna@lemmy.vg 6 points 6 hours ago

wait, so you're saying milking people for ALL the cash is causing people to not be able to afford... kids? Wow. I mean, this is a shock. A shock i tell you.

[–] inclementimmigrant@lemmy.world 3 points 7 hours ago

Can we all just admit that Mike Judge and Etan Cohen are prophets?

[–] anarchy79@lemmy.world 16 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Just like animals, humans don't like to breed in captivity.

[–] velma@sh.itjust.works 6 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

When given the choice, women choose to delay having children and they don't have as many children as they were forced to before contraception was available.

The economy doesn't help, but it's not the main driving force.

[–] anarchy79@lemmy.world 1 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

You will find that men agree to the same extent.

[–] velma@sh.itjust.works 2 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

Right, but men didn’t gain contraception access and education and career opportunities the same way women did.

They already had it.

[–] Bristlecone@lemmy.world 4 points 9 hours ago

Another "no shit" problem but still valuable to know

[–] apftwb@lemmy.world 3 points 10 hours ago

Yes yes we all have seen Idiocracy.

[–] Tempus_Fugit@lemmy.world 11 points 13 hours ago (2 children)

I've been fed that line that I'm selfish for not wanting kids. I ask them why they had theirs. They'll feed me some BS, but we all know the majority had them for selfish reasons.

[–] Formfiller@lemmy.world 3 points 5 hours ago

Not having kids with the state of the world the way it is is pretty selfless. I respect that

[–] velma@sh.itjust.works 3 points 13 hours ago (8 children)

Yeah the choice to have or not have children should be regarded with much more respect by everyone.

Not everyone in here is child-free by the way.

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[–] Malyca@lemmy.zip 10 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

I feel so guilty for having my kids. In all my life I never expected this to be reality. I hope they forgive me.

[–] velma@sh.itjust.works 8 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

People have been having children in terrible conditions for a long, long time. I like to focus on the small joys when I start to feel this way about having kids.

Remember the joy you see on their faces when you're spending time with them. Celebrate their cleverness and their love. Focus on building your real community around you for them and for yourself. Help neighbors. Grow plants. Reconnect with the good parts of life.

We all make decisions with what we know at the time. It's easy to beat ourselves up when we have more information and wisdom than we did before.

[–] Malyca@lemmy.zip 4 points 13 hours ago

Very kind of you to say, thank you.

[–] trackball_fetish@lemmy.wtf 5 points 13 hours ago

G O O D G O O D G O O D G O O D

1.There's too many people on this planet 2. They won't give us even the basic amount of respect 3. Less people to take care of those who caused these issues

[–] Washedupcynic@lemmy.ca 7 points 19 hours ago (4 children)

How long before we are just mass growing babies in petri dishes and decanting bottles on an assembly line like brave new world?

[–] foxwolf@pawb.social 8 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

That's way more expensive than forcibly impregnating imprisoned women. Once we put all these psycho lefties into the camps, there will be plenty of worthless childless women who can be put to work restocking our wage-slave peasant numbers. They're currently working on the means by which to round them up. We got official "trump derangement syndrome" diagnoses in the works. We got impossibly high prices on everything, which forces people to do crimes of survival. Anyone saying any left wing thoughts can be imprisoned for life on terrorism charges. They already started doing the life imprisonment for people who have ever written down anything left of center, but they're still working on forced identification of everyone on the internet. Once the "age verification" shit gets worked out and they know exactly who posted what, it'll be super easy to round up all the lefties.

[–] Washedupcynic@lemmy.ca 7 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Eventually the only escape will be suicide. If it came down to it, I'd end things on my terms rather than be enslaved to be a baby maker.

[–] Formfiller@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago

We need to invoke the second amendment before that can happen. We need people for the revolution

[–] velma@sh.itjust.works 5 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Considering the attack on IVF, I don’t think that’s what conservatives have in mind for the solution to this supposed problem.

[–] Nutteman@lemmy.world 9 points 18 hours ago

Yeah they clearly plan on the easier, cheaper, and more vile option: forcing pregnancy onto people via denial of access to contraceptives

[–] A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world 2 points 16 hours ago

i think it'd be more akin to the kriegsmen being mass produced in iron wombs ala 40k, personally.

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[–] Grass@sh.itjust.works 39 points 1 day ago (3 children)

This sounds like the study was funded by anti abortion losers. Contraception isn't the problem, its billionaires, lobbyists, and politicians making it utterly unaffordable and morally wrong in multiple ways, but only left leaning people would even consider holding back on having children based on how much suffering they would guarantee their own children by merely giving birth to them.

[–] ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net 5 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

According to the research I've seen most people don't have kids because they don't want to have kids. Significant amount also can't afford it. Everything else (like worrying about wars, climate change, healthcare etc.) is not that significant.

[–] BeMoreCareful@lemmy.world 4 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

True, if anything, there are a lot of people who have kids and wish they didn't.

[–] derfunkatron@lemmy.world 6 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

“People having kids and wishing they didn’t” is due to a lack of options, social pressure, ostracism for choosing abortion, the stigma of remaining childless, and a whole bunch of propaganda.

People choosing not to have kids because they don’t want them is a relatively modern lifestyle.

For most of history, people having kids wasn’t so much a choice as it was something that happened to them.

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[–] theacharnian@lemmy.ca 8 points 20 hours ago (3 children)
[–] Bahnd@lemmy.world 3 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Isnt this one of the beliefs of Pastafarians?

[–] theacharnian@lemmy.ca 2 points 16 hours ago

The data shows that belief in pastafarianism is caused by understanding the difference between correlation and causation.

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[–] muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works 18 points 1 day ago

Translation: people who recognize this shit sucks and don’t want to inflict it upon a child happen to be leftists.

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